In the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, a hopelessly outnumbered General Custer, along with his Seventh Cavalry of the United States Army, was defeated by a combined Lakota-Northern Cheyenne force. Custer and his forces were outnumbered at least three to one. When the end came, it was swift, the final battle lasting only 30 minutes to an hour. As Abdullah Badawi surveys the formidable gathering forces – Anwar and the Pakatan Rakyat, Tengku Razaleigh and Mukhriz, Mahathir and Najib – on the terrain around him, he could be forgiven for wanting to dig in deep and come out fighting with a slew of reforms. Why, even Hishamuddin has apologised! But these reforms are likely to be too little too late. For one thing, he has not delivered where it matters most. Think of the yet-to-be-formed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission, a truly independent judiciary, a fearlessly independent [Read more]
This morning, at around 2.30am, Rustam Sani, social critic, political analyst, author of books on Malay and Malaysian nationalism, former lecturer and politician, newspaper columnist and fellow blogger, passed away. He had been unwell for some time. Rustam Sani, an Aliran member, was famously described by Jomo as “arguably Malaysia’s leading public intellectual”. It was only last night that Aliran posted his last commentary piece on its website – about Mahathir. He was the son of one of the great tokohs of the independence era, Ahmad Boestaman of the Angkatan Pemuda Insaf. Boestaman would go on to become the first MP to be detained in independent Malaya. More than that, I will miss Rustam because he was a good friend of mine. I would occasionally phone him when I was writing articles and he never failed to shed new insights into the local political situation. These were the last two [Read more]
I hate to pour cold water on the euphoria over the announcement of an independent ACA. But what else can you think when you read between the lines of the following NST/Bernama report? Notice that what will be independent is the Advisory Board to the ACA. So the board can only advise the ACA, but presumably the ACA is free to reject the “advice”. It would only be in terms of recruitment etc. But who is ultimately responsible for the ACA then? The Parliamentary Committee? No way, Jose! “There’s always a minister, anywhere in the world, responsible for any institution set up. And I will be responsible for the institution,” said the PM. So how is that different from before, when the ACA was answerable to the PM? Is he just playing with words again – similar to his apology to the 1988 judicial crisis judges that wasn’t an apology [Read more]
